126 TJTILITT AND DESTRUCTIOIS" OF REPTILES. 



times attained. The use of firearms has enabled man to reduce 

 the numbers of the larger serpents, and they do not often escape 

 him long enough to arrive at the size ascribed to them by travel- 

 lers a century or two ago. Captain Speke, however, shot a 

 serpent in Africa which measured fifty-one and a half feet in 

 length. 



Some enthusiastic entomologist will, perhaps, by and by dis- 

 cover that insects and worms are as essential as the larger organ- 

 isms to the proper working of the great terraqueous machine, 

 and we shall have as eloquent pleas in defence of the mosquito, 

 and perhaps even of the tzetze-fly, as Toussenel and Michelet 

 have framed in behalf of the bird. The silkworm, the lac insect, 

 and the bee need no apologist ; a gallnut produced by the punc- 

 ture of a cynijpa on a Syrian oak is a necessary ingredient in the 

 ink I am writing with, and from my windows I recognize the 

 grain of the kermes and the cochineal in the gay habiliments of 

 the holiday groups beneath them. 



These humble forms of being are seldom conspicuous by mere 

 mass, and though the winds and the waters sometimes sweep to- 

 gether large heaps of locusts and even of May-flies, their remains 

 are for the most part speedily decomposed, their exuviae and their 

 structures rarely form strata, and still less does nature use them, 

 as she does the calcareous and sihcious cases and dwellings of 

 animalcular species, to build reefs and spread out submarine 

 deposits which subsequent geological action may convert into 

 islands and even mountains.* 



* Calcaire A friganes, as it is locally called, or limestone fiUed with the ^■/l- 

 dusim of the larvae of May-flies, covers some square miles near Clermont in 

 Auvergne. 



Although the remains of extant animals are rarely, if ever, gathered in 

 sufficient quantities to possess any geographical importance by their mere 

 mass, the decayed exuviae of even the smaller and humbler forms of life are 

 sometimes abundant enough to exercise a perceptible influence on soil and at- 

 mosphere. "The plain of Cumana," says Humboldt, "presents a remark- 

 able phenomenon, after heavy rains. The moistened earth, when heated by 

 the rays of the sun, diffuses the musky odor common in the torrid zone to 

 animals of very different classes, to the jaguar, the small species of tiger-cat, 

 the cabiai", the gallinazo vulture, the crocodile, the viper, and the rattlesnake. 

 The gaseous emanations, the vehicles of this aroma, appear to be disengaged 

 in proportion as the soil, which contains the remains of an innumerable mul- 



